How asteroid mining could add trillions to the world economy

Yahoo! News / The Week ^ | June 25, 2013 | John Aziz

[2ndDivisionVet]

An asteroid less than a mile in diameter could hold more than $20 trillion in industrial and precious metals

Resources on Earth are limited. Our planet was born with a fixed amount of water, hydrocarbons, nitrogen, and industrial and precious metals.

And we're collecting, processing, and eventually throwing out those resources at an alarming rate: A United Nations report on resource depletion says that between 1980 and 2008 natural resources per capita declined by 20 percent in the United States, 33 percent in South Africa, 25 percent in Brazil, and 17 percent in China.

For now, only protection and better resource management can safeguard the planet. As we burn through Earth's resources, a wealth of physical resources like metals, water, and hydrocarbons are floating around in asteroids, moons, and other planets, ready to be harvested. If human civilization is to continue to grow and expand over the centuries and millennia to come, hunger for resources is likely to drive us to explore and mine what's way, way out there.

And as wild as it may sound, asteroids in particular could be highly profitable. In 1997 scientists speculated that a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 0.99 miles contains more than $20 trillion worth of industrial and precious metals.....

[norwaypinesavage]

"scientists speculated that a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 0.99 miles contains more than $20 trillion worth of industrial and precious metals"

Similarly, a "relatively small gold mine on earth contains more than $20 billion worth of gold". It's quite easy to find the gold - if you look for it only in the mine. The only trick is finding where to place the mine.

Even if you could solve all of the "asteroid mining" problems, you still have to fine a SUITABLE "small metallic asteroid", and then get it here. My recommendation of to invest in the lottery instead. The odds of success are much-much better.

[ckilmer]

I disagree. Leftist ideology has so completely infected scientific thought today that I’m positive that the late 20th - early 21st century will someday be referred to as the Second Dark Ages.
............
I don’t disagree with you about the cause and effect of leftist ideology. I just think it takes longer the scientific/technological effects to take hold if for no other reason that there is an enormous momentum built up behind the scientific/technological enterprise in every part of the scientific/technological spectrum.